Abu
Saqqara |name = The Nubian Border}} Abu is a mission found in . It is the peaceful first mission of the Old Kingdom. If the option to display classical city names is chosen, this city is called Elephantine. Briefing Goals * Population: 4000 * Culture: 30 * Prosperity: 30 * Kingdom: 50 Summary In the first mission of the Old Kingdom, Nebka has proclaimed that we push the borders to the First Cataract of the Nile to take advantage of the rock deposits at Abu. No navy, limited starting capital, inefficient geography and high population requirement make this the first real city building challenge. Abu is characterised by being one of the few missions in which you must colonise a large center island to build the bulk of the city to reach the goals. The flood plains here are large and expansive, but without irrigation, flooding quality is noticeably poor and may result in large famines if your city is not well prepared to handle large-scale food distribution. The south of the west island contains most of the raw materials, with the south of the middle island having enough for a few mines as well. Trade ships come from the North on the west river. The east flood plain is large but cannot be utilized efficiently due to long worker and cart walking distances. At the start most money will be made by selling both Gems and Jewellery by ship. A dock can be placed on the middle island with a ferry directly connecting to the raw material site. Both Granite and Sand Stone should also me produced to fulfil any requests, with any excess being sold over land to cover production costs. Barley into Beer and Flax into Linen can also provide additional exports if required. Reeds can be imported and Papyrus exported for a little bit of profit. If housing level is developed then tax can be used to help cover labour expenses. Between all these sales it should be easy to achieve the required prosperity ratting. Most of the mission will pass fairly quickly as long as you can design efficient blocks for the odd shapes of the islands. In theory unemployment could be dealt with by developing houses into Common Manor but this is not easy or recommended due to the map geography. Optimizing for space should be a high propriety and on first attempts it is quite possible that entire areas have to be demolished to fit the required people. About 3 decent Fancy Residence blocks should provide the 4,000 needed people. The poor floodplain fertility can be combated by regular festivals and sufficient religious buildings to Osiris. His blessings increase flood quality or farm yields. Houses store up to 2 years consumption of each type of food so the odd poor harvest should not affect them. Although houses will only eat at most 2 types of food at any time, providing the a small amount of the lowest priority third type of food might have benefits to population health/happiness as well as giving an extra 2 years worth of food storage for emergency. A Temple Complex to Ptah can be constructed. Not only will this service up to 8,000 people but also can be upgraded to provide a number of additional effects while making the area around it highly desirable. It does cost quite a lot, especially when upgraded, and requires 50 workers to run so should be built mid game when the city can afford it. Although there are no military invasions in this mission, there are still troop requests to help places like Abedju. These only occur very late game and it is easily possible to win long before such request are made. Once the city is decently developed build a few squads of infantry just in case. 08